Florent Ghys the Filmmaker

Florent Ghys was born in Bordeaux, France. As a child, he studied classical guitar and eventually moved on to the electric guitar, from which he became an electric bassist. In college, he studied ethnomusicology and double bass performance. He is a bassist in an ensemble he writes for called “Bonjour”.

His path to composing, like most, was a bit nonlinear. France was not a place where the profession of composing was easily attainable, as composers were held to a particular standard. He told us that an important part of his development as a composer was hearing Steve Reich say that “if you want your music played, you have to play it yourself.” that phrase basically gave Ghys permission to be freer to explore his interests in his work, resulting in his finding his compositional voice and individuality. One of the pieces that really illustrates this is “Soli”, a rhythmic multi-track work that incorporates several instruments all played by Ghys.

Ghys chooses to subvert the attitude of most contemporary composers by incorporating clever and witty concepts into his pieces. He doesn’t take himself seriously at all and says that contemporary music should be fun. He composes around found video elements that he manipulates musically. An interesting technique he has created is a method of composing a duet of sorts to dialogue, specifically weather reports. He explained to us that his mother would watch weather reports every day almost ritualistically and that he saw weather broadcasts as an interesting phenomenon culturally, as something that was a constant throughout the world although the daily news was different in each locality. Through this, he has constructed a unique musical voice and affirmed his ability as a composer.

Florent Ghys is an excellent example of a former NYU student out in the world. He has been able to create work that is authentic and true to himself, which I think is something that many of us strive to do in our concert work. Not only that, his work was just purely entertaining, which was a great thing to experience.

As a film composer, I am always excited to find other composers who incorporate visual elements into their work, and I think it is even more impressive when composers create their own films and music videos. I think Florent Ghys is good at exploiting a slightly gray area between director and composer in filmmaking, where he considers both the music and visuals in his work. Both what is heard and seen are so integral in the experience sometimes, especially in the piece “Petits Artefacts: Game”, in which the visuals of a game of Pong matched perfectly with the audio of a cello solo. Alone, the music would not have had the same visceral effect as it did when synchronized with the video, and vice versa.

I have been vaguely familiar with Ghys’ work for a while, and hearing his philosophy about wanting to make work that supplements his interests and contemporary music that is fun makes me much more interested in whatever future projects he comes up with next.